this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Isn't the whole point of BitLocker protection from direct access? When a computer is turned off, encryption should keep the data safe. Also when a computer is turned off, basically no remote vector is going to work. AFAIK, when the computer is on, the drive is mounted and BitLocker provides no additional protection over an unencrypted drive.
Yes, you're correct. It's just that if somebody is got full access to your hardware, with no time limits and can just poke around your pcb, BitLocker is the least of your concerns. It should still not be flawed - but at that point, even Samsung's Knox, Qualcomm's memory protection and Apple's Secure Enclave have failed in the past, allowing the tinkerer to extract decryption keys.
It's more realistic to expect BitLocker to protect your external hard drive in case I grab it and run away, rather than expecting your computer to be bullet proof in case I aprehend the entire device.
But again, I do agree, this is a vulnerability and it's an issue, though limited to people using an actual TPM module rather than the built in one in the CPU.
Veracrypt drive encryption does not have the same problem, it would be secure even with physical access
I don't think a Veracrypt setup could use a hardware pairing for the decryption key, and also boot from an encrypted drive, though.
Yeah, it's safe because of no TPM usage. You can boot from an encrypted drive, it'll prompt for the key instead of auto loading from vulnerable hardware
Bitlocker supports the same usecase, but everybody wants that automatic boot feature so...
It also lets you store a secondary key on a server and require the computer to be on trusted networks to be able to retrieve it to boot, but I've never ever heard of anybody using that
Pretty sure it uploads the key to microsoft servers when you do that
That's the default, but you can block it in the command line configuration tool